


hold my lungs, help me breathe

by oceanknives



Series: tour bus diaries [1]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Dealing With Compulsory Heterosexuality, Fig is a lesbian in this, Friendship, Gen, between freshman and sophomore year, if you read this as romantic i will scream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:41:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25072537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceanknives/pseuds/oceanknives
Summary: Gorgug asks questions that Fig has always been afraid to answer.
Relationships: Figueroth Faeth & Gorgug Thistlespring
Series: tour bus diaries [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1815829
Comments: 12
Kudos: 77





	hold my lungs, help me breathe

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I wrote fic! Wooh!  
> I feel like I need to put so many disclaimers because I truly do not want anyone to interpret this as romantic — I wrote this as a lesbian who dealt and still deals with compulsory heterosexuality and thinks Fig could be a lesbian and deal with the same thing, but with Gorgug to help her work through it. So, yeah, keep that in mind, and I hope you will enjoy this because it is very close to my heart!
> 
> For Izzy <3

"Why do you keep kissing way older men ?"

Fig is lying in her bunk, her ears still ringing from the show and the audience's screams, and somehow Gorgug's question is the loudest thing she's heard all night. Her heart feels like it's going to beat out of her chest and take her useless lungs with it.

She feels a slight push from beneath her mattress, and Gorgug's voice rises again from the bunk under hers.

"Fig ?"

She stays quiet, hoping,  _ praying _ , that if she stays still enough Gorgug will think she's asleep, and then he'll fall asleep too and forget he even asked the question and she won't have to ever think about it.

Of course, Gorgug knows her too well to think that. He's seen her stay up long after they get back into the bus, jittery and excited and so alive he can barely keep up. He could probably picture her staring holes into the ceiling when he asked the question.

So he speaks and fills the silence Fig is afraid of.

"Sorry, that was rude. You don't have to answer."

The minutes pass. Or seconds. Fig isn't sure. Her breaths are either deep or shallow, her skin is either burning or shivering, her mind is either racing or empty, or maybe it's all happening at the same time. The words are right there, on the tip of her tongue, resting on her lips like those way older men, and yet they feel inadequate, not enough. Like those way older men.

Every time she thinks she said the words and thinks she hears Gorgug's response, she realises the bus is still silent and she's still scared and she just knows Gorgug so well she can picture his response. Each time, it is devastating.

"Because it's easy."

Oh. Well. Here go the words.

Gorgug stays silent, and Fig knows he's giving her the space she needs to speak, but she pretends he fell asleep in the seconds minutes hours it took her to reply.

"Or, well."

More silence. Funny, how things she has intimately known for so long can be so hard to express. The alienating experience of explaining familiarity.

"It's a bunch of things. It's like, not me, right, so I don't have to deal with the consequences. It feels almost fictional. Like I'm stepping into a movie and get to live the great romantic moment and then step away. I don't know these people so it doesn't feel real, I guess."

Gorgug doesn't reply. Maybe he is asleep after all.

"Also, I don't think I could ever kiss someone as myself."

"I'm not asleep-" damn it, Gorgug, "I'm just thinking of what to say."

The silence stretches again. Deep down, Fig knows Gorgug  _ probably _ won't judge her - he's her friend! He's Gorgug! But there remains a fear, a quiet anxiety lining her every breath, and she closes her eyes tight, swearing to herself she'll never be open again - because she never has been, truly.

"Okay." Fig shivers. "So. It's about, not being vulnerable, right ?"

Fig laughs.

"Yeah, I guess. Something like that. I don't know. Deep down I think I fully get why I do it, but I can't make it make sense out loud."

"I get that."

Fig breathes easier, now, but each rise and fall of her chest feels heavy with grief. She's not sure what she's grieving, but she does.

She goes down the ladder on the side of the bunk and is now standing on the floor of the unmoving bus, and she can finally see Gorgug, and she doesn't even need to say a word for him to scoot back on his tiny, tiny mattress - his poor back - to leave her room, and she crawls in the space he left for her.

It's small but it's perfect. She thinks for a second about how she shrunk her name down to three letters because she always felt like she could never live up to the God knows how many her full name has. She thinks for a second about how Gorgug knows to shrink the world down for her so she can fill it. So she can feel safe, knowing the entire universe fits in her palm, and say the things she's scared people will hear otherwise. She focuses on how warm his mattress is, instead.

"Sometimes I think about kissing you. To see."

"As yourself ?"

"Yeah."

The world is almost too small right now.

"Why me ?"

Fig sighs.

"The other ones, it's like, I'm not myself and I don't know them but they know who I'm portraying and they love that reflection. You, it's... You know me. Even when I wish you didn't. And you haven't left yet. You haven't lied yet. Fuck, _I_ haven't lied yet."

Gorgug breathes. Fig breathes with him, and it feels easy. Everything does.

"It's like you said. The vulnerability."

"Yeah. Yeah, I get that."

Another beat.

"Do you  _ want  _ to kiss me ?"

Fig looks up at that. Gorgug's face isn't raw with emotion or desperately in love like in movies, it's just earnest and sincere. Fig can tell he's not in love with her, and she's not in love with him, but there's the knowledge that they could be, in another world, and that it would be nice.

"Yeah, I think so."

Gorgug leans forward, and so does she, and when she presses her lips against his, it's - it's safe. It's known and it's nice and it's easy - not like those way older men. Easy like cooking a recipe you've made dozens of time is. Easy like practising scales. Easy like talking to Gorgug. It feels like kissing someone you think you could have been head over heels for, but aren't, because you know them too much, or because you know yourself too much. When they pull back from each other, they giggle a bit.

A beat.

"Gorgug, I think I'm gay."

"I still think about the time I kissed Ragh."

The words don't step on each other, just, overlap, intertwine, like they do. Always in sync.

The seconds minutes hours keep passing, and they keep talking.

* * *

Years later, when Fig glances at Ayda's peaceful sleeping face, illuminated by the soft glow of her hair, each eyelash a delicate spark resting on her cheek, she feels her breath catch and mindlessly lets her hand rest on the tin flower tattooed on her ribcage, feels her lungs push against it, feels the life flow in her.

Memories of that night in the tour bus come back to her, and she smiles. Yeah. Yeah.


End file.
